The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood.

Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.

They tell you that you'll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don't tell you is that you won't miss it very much.

Put cotton in your ears and pebbles in your shoes. Pull on rubber gloves. Smear Vaseline over your glasses, and there you have it: instant old age.

It is the fear of being as dependent as a young child, while not being loved as a child is loved, but merely being kept alive against one's will.

Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.

Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.

Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens

Any fiction should be a story. In any story there are three elements: persons, a situation, and the fact that in the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn't a story.

Going back to Hemingway's work after several years is like going back to a brook where you had often fished and finding the woods as deep and cool as they used to be.

Age is not different from earlier life as long as you're sitting down

Whatever you can conceive, you can achieve it.

Success is evident from the joy you experience. Be willing to let go of anything that takes your joy away.

As water downs ships but upholds leaves, and as fires burn cities but refines gold, so do life's troubles propel the meek to greatnessand the proud to ruin.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

I have observed that as long as one lives and bestirs himself, he can always find food and raiment, though it may not be of the choicest description.

The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one.

Often, before returning home, I would take a long and roundabout way and pass by the peaceful ramparts from where I had glimpses of other provinces, and a sight of the distant country.

If the will remains in protest, it stays dependent on that which it is protesting against.

Never try to fix other people. God does not need to do a bank shot off your lips.

My poetry had the same functional origin and the same formal configuration as teenage acne.